ST. CAJETAN (1922)

Two St. Cajetan churches are cornerstones of Denver's Hispanic heritage. The old St. Cajetan, the peach and gray-painted landmark now used as an auditorium for the Auraria Campus at 9th and Lawrence streets, was the first Hispanic parish in Denver. The second St. Cajetan's, a striking contemporary design by Denver architect Ramón F. Martínez on West Alameda Avenue between Raleigh and Stuart streets, symbolizes the ability of Hispanics to move up and out of the core city. Like the parent church, it continues to serve as the Spanish national church of Denver.

Auraria, the oldest continually occupied neighborhood in what is now Denver, began attracting Hispanics from Southern Colorado, New Mexico, and Old Mexico in the early 1900s. They attended either St. Elizabeth's (a German national parish) or St. Leo's (a heavily Irish church at 10th Street and West Colfax Avenue). During the 1920s, leading Hispanic ladies presented Bishop Tihen with a petition asking for their own church and for the Theatine fathers, an order active in the American Southwest. The Theatines had been founded in 1524 by St. Cajetan of Vicenza, and from the beginning Hispanics wanted their parish to be named St. Cajetan. This Italian saint trusted in Divine Providence to care for the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, and the poor and humble of this world.

In 1922, Bartolomew Caldentey began saying Masses for Hispanics in the basement of St. Leo's. As Denver's Hispanic population swelled, this congregation became larger than that of some parishes. The Spanish-speaking people began to aspire to their own parish and recalled a proud heritage; they had built the first churches and offered the first Masses in Colorado. Fathers Dominguez and Escalante, after their path-breaking 1776 exploration of the Southwest, had given the world its first published account of the mountainous realm that would become the State of Colorado a century later.

Despite this proud past and despite the fact that many of Father Caldentey's flock at St. Leo's were not "Mexicans" but third-, fourth-, and fifth-generation Colorado natives, Hispanics found themselves often treated as second-class citizens. They wanted their own church, and Father Caldentey knew just the man to ask.

John Kernan Mullen, a poor, uneducated Irishman turned millionaire flour miller, had grown up in Auraria and had helped build St. Leo Church. Mullen had left his old home at 9th and Lawrence streets to build a Capitol Hill mansion. Father Caldentey approached Mullen, the most generous philanthropist in town, about using his old home in Auraria as a church site. In 1923, after repeated conversations among Father Caldentey, William O'Brien of St. Leo's, and Bishop Tihen, the Mullens donated their old home as a new home for St. Cajetan's. Joyously, the Theatines and their Hispanic parishioners moved out of St. Leo's basement and into the small house, which soon resounded with Masses, classes, and meetings. The parish borrowed $15,000 for a new church and broke ground on October 1, 1924. By January 1925, the basement was finished, the borrowed money exhausted, and Father Caldentey had been called to Rome to become the superior general of the Theatine order. Once again, J. K. Mullen came to the rescue, donating $65,708 of the $89,000 needed to complete St. Cajetan's on March 21, 1926. Celebrating their heritage, parishioners had Robert Willison (who was also the architect for the Denver Municipal Auditorium and St. Dominic Catholic Church), design a 700-seat Spanish colonial revival gem.

Bishop Tihen appointed Father Humphrey Martorell to replace Father Caldentey. As Denver's Hispanic population soared from 1,390 in 1920 to 12,345 in 1940 and to 43,147 in 1960, St. Cajetan parish flourished. Magdalena Gallegos, who was born in the small rental house at 943 10th Street, eloquently recorded the life of her Auraria neighborhood and of her parish in Issue 2 of the 1985 Colorado Heritage magazine:

Discrimination from the outside brought the Hispanic community closer together. There was a sense of belonging in the neighborhood. The permanence of the community was established in 1926 when St. Cajetan's Catholic Church was built. . . . The lives of the Spanish speaking people in Auraria revolved around their church. . . . where they met weekly, made friends, and watched the children grow. . . .The Hispanic people did not have [any other] public institution where they could mix and feel important.

Festive weddings kept the parish young. Magdalena's father said of his wedding at St. Cajetan's, "I saved $200 and paid for the wedding gown, the flowers, my suit, and all the food and drinks for the wedding dinner at 943 10th Street. I rented a brand new white Chrysler and for the honeymoon, we drove to Greeley just for the heck of it." Music filled the lives of the people and their church. "Every girl sang in the choir," recalled Magdalena Gallegos,

and the men played in the band. The basement of the church was always filled with music as people practiced for operettas and plays. A magnificent organ was donated to the church from the old Tabor Grand Opera House complete with cowbells and cymbals. Billy Bernard, the organist, would nearly blast the praying parishioners out of their pews when he played his elaborate renditions of rumbas, sambas, and boleros before the 10:30 Masses on Sundays.

Six Sisters of St. Benedict from Atchison, Kansas, opened the St. Cajetan School and convent in the fall of 1935. This new brick, two-story school soon overflowed with students in all eight grades. The parish's Ave Maria clinic dispensed not only health care but also free lunches, and every day the black-clad Benedictine nuns marched a parade of children from the school at 9th and Lawrence to lunch at the clinic at 8th and Curtis streets.

To help Hispanic families buy cars and homes and meet life's emergencies, the St. Cajetan Credit Union opened on January 10, 1939. Many successful Colorado Hispanics, to this day, trace their rise to the spiritual, cultural, physical, and economic assistance that St. Cajetan's offered. Trying to reach out to even the poorest people squatting in the South Platte River bottoms, St. Cajetan's established Our Lady of Victory Mission, a tiny chapel at West 12th Avenue and Umatilla Street that was washed away by the flood of 1965.

When rumors swept the Auraria neighborhood in the 1960s that the Denver Urban Renewal Authority was going to demolish the neighborhood to make way for the 169-acre Auraria Higher Education Center, neighbors met in the basement of the church. Some prayed, some decided to fight the project, and some resigned themselves to the blow. Father James Prohens, who in 1970 had succeeded Father John Ordinas as the fourth Theatine pastor, recalls that sad time:

We watched them knock down the school, the clinic, and the credit union. We had to build a new church. Practically the whole community moved out to Southwest Denver with us in the new St. Cajetan, which opened in 1975. We also found ourselves strengthened in the new church by a largely Hispanic, Catholic community that was already living out there.

Parishioners worked with preservationists to at least save the handsome old church building that had been the center of so many activities. As a monument of Hispanic architecture, culture, history, and religion, St. Cajetan's was declared both a National Register and a Denver Landmark Preservation Commission landmark. This forced the Denver Urban Renewal Authority to spare it and allowed the Auraria campus to recycle the church as the largest and most elegant hall on campus. It is used for everything from theater to the annual storytelling conference, where Hispanic students have reminisced about St. Cajetan's past as the heart and soul of the now vanished community of Auraria.